The Fisk Jubilee Singers, Jefferson Street, the Tigerbelles and the students who desegregated downtown.
The Fisk Jubilee Singers
In 1871 a group of Fisk University students set out on tour to raise money for their struggling college. The Fisk Jubilee Singers raised enough to build Fisk's first permanent building, Jubilee Hall. In April 1873, on a tour of Britain and Europe, they sang Steal Away to Jesus and Go Down, Moses for Queen Victoria.
Jefferson Street
Jefferson Street grew into the historic center of Black Nashville, near three historically Black schools, Fisk, Meharry Medical College and Tennessee State University. From the 1940s to the 1960s its clubs, Club Baron, the Del Morocco and the New Era among them, drew Jimi Hendrix, Etta James, Ray Charles and more.
In 1968 Interstate 40 was built across the street, breaking up the community and driving its economic decline.
Meharry And The Tigerbelles
In 1876 Meharry Medical College was founded as the medical department of Central Tennessee College, the first medical school for African Americans in the South. Today it is the second-largest educator of African American doctors and dentists in the country.
At Tennessee State University, the coach Ed Temple led the women's track team known as the Tigerbelles. Wilma Rudolph trained with him while she was still in high school and enrolled at TSU in 1958, and at the 1960 Olympics in Rome she won the 100 meters, the 200 meters and the 4 by 100 meter relay, the first American woman to win three gold medals at a single Games.
The Nashville Sit-Ins
Students trained in nonviolence in James Lawson's workshops, among them Diane Nash, John Lewis and C. T. Vivian, sat in at downtown lunch counters from February 13, 1960. Early on April 19, dynamite was thrown into the north Nashville home of the lawyer Z. Alexander Looby. Later that day Nash asked Mayor Ben West whether he believed the lunch counters should be desegregated, and he said yes.
On May 10, six downtown stores served Black customers at their lunch counters for the first time, and Nashville became the first major Southern city to begin desegregating its public facilities.
Black Nashville Today
North Nashville, around Jefferson Street and the three universities, carries this history forward, and Black-owned restaurants, salons, studios and brands are part of everyday Nashville.
Shop Black-owned businesses in Nashville on CashBlack.
Photo Credits
Jubilee Hall at Fisk University. Photo: Unknown, book in which the image is published in was edited by W. N. Hartshorn and George W. Penniman., Public domain, Wikimedia Commons Jefferson Street, Nashville. Photo: LittleT889, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons